She tried to get off the couch, then fell back. She tried to hold her arms out to me, but she couldn’t do that, either. They dropped into the sodden mess of her dress. Her eyes started to roll up and I was sure she was going to faint, but she held on. “You came,” she whispered. “Oh, Jake, you came for me. You both did.”
“Bee Tree Lane!” Deke shouted into the phone. “No, I don’t know the number, I can’t remember it, but you’ll see an old man with chop suey on his shoes standing outside and waving his arms! Hurry! She’s lost a lot of blood!”
“Sit still,” I said. “Don’t try to—”
Her eyes widened. She was looking over my shoulder. “Look out! Jake,
I turned, fumbling in my pocket for the gun. Deke also turned, holding the telephone receiver in both of his arthritis-knotted hands like a club. But although Clayton had picked up the knife he’d used to disfigure Sadie, his days of attacking anyone were over. Anyone but himself, that is.
It was another scene I’d played before, this one on Greenville Avenue, not long after I’d come to Texas. There was no Muddy Waters blasting from the Desert Rose, but here was another badly hurt woman and another man bleeding from another broken nose, his shirt untucked and flapping almost to his knees. He was holding a knife instead of a gun, but otherwise it was just the same.
“No, Clayton!” I shouted. “Put it down!”
His eyes, visible through clumps of orange hair, were bulging as he stared at the dazed, half-fainting woman on the couch. “Is this what you want, Sadie?” he shouted. “If this is what you want, I’ll give you what you want!”
Grinning desperately, he raised the knife to his throat… and cut.
From the Dallas
A gunman with a high-powered rifle tried to kill former Maj. General Edwin A. Walker at his home Wednesday night, police said, and missed the controversial crusader by less than an inch.
Walker was working on his income taxes at 9:00 PM when the bullet crashed through a rear window and slammed into a wall next to him.
Police said a slight movement by Walker apparently saved his life.
“Somebody had a perfect bead on him,” said Detective Ira Van Cleave. “Whoever it was certainly wanted to kill him.”
Walker dug out several fragments of the shell’s jacket from his right sleeve and was still shaking glass and slivers of the bullet out of his hair when reporters arrived.
Walker said he returned to his Dallas home Monday after the first stop of a lecture-tour called “Operation Midnight Ride.” He also told reporters…
From the Dallas
